WordSisters

Tag: wordsisters

  • Connection

    “I see you, Crystel,” I say. She’s hanging in the apple tree above me. I pause my reading. Decide to snap a photo to send to her. She flits away before I can reach my phone. Of course. She’s elusive like that. Later, I’m sitting in the living room when I hear, “Chip, chip, chip” through the open door. “I hear you, Crystel,” I say. She sometimes follows me when I walk the dogs. Flying from tree to tree as we make our way around the neighborhood.

    Crystel is currently a senior at the University of Hawaii at Manoa. “Why am I a male cardinal?” she asks when I tell her that in her absence, she has embodied that symbol.

    It’s simple. “Because I can see you. It’s hard to miss a red cardinal perched in our trees, settling on our fence line, or resting on electrical wire,” I tell her. Really, she could have easily been a yellow finch that visits our purple anise hyssop for their dried seeds, or a monarch butterfly that reminds Jody of her mother, or a dragonfly that dips into our pool for a drink.

    “There’s Granny,” we all say when we see the colorful monarch. Jody and Crystel were at Granny’s gravesite shortly after she died. They were sitting on the ground facing Granny and reminiscing. A butterfly suddenly swooped towards their faces. There was no mistaking that was Granny.  

    For our wedding announcement 22 years ago, Jody and I used the dragonfly and a poem by Scott Russell Sanders: To be centered… means to have a home territory, to be attached in a web of relationships with other people, to value common experience, and to recognize that one’s life rises constantly from inward depths. The dragonfly represented transformation.

    The male cardinal transforms my energy connection to Crystel into physical form. A sighting of the brilliant red birds and their distinctive whistle awakens my sight and hearing senses. I smile, laugh. Send her love.

    Juan is a constant presence. His car is in the driveway. If I’m up early enough I can hear him leave in the morning for work and ask him how his day went when he comes home. Jody and I bring him keepsakes from our travels. He’s solid, steady, a known entity. I like having him at home. It’s a gift. I prefer he doesn’t become a symbol, though I expect some day he will.

    Change is the one thing we can count on.

    photo credit audubon
    • Mama-Sister

      Mama-Sister

      “You don’t know anything about me.”

      My brother was right. I didn’t. I didn’t have any idea where he had gone. What he did. Who he knew. His incarceration record. Jails. Prison.

      The 23-year-old sitting with me and a staff member at the halfway house had called me mom until he was 8 years old. He was the last of my parents’ 12 children. I took care of him the best a teenager could.

      “I’m afraid you’re going to die, Johnny,” I said. “That I won’t see you again. I’ll get a phone call saying that you’re dead.” I sobbed.

      The fight left him. He softened. Maybe he was remembering the times I tried to locate him when our parents put him away in homes for troubled kids. Homes, plural.

      “I wish I could have taken you with me,” I said. “I couldn’t. I had to save myself.”

      One time I did find him. He was 13. I called and set a date with the residential facility without my parent’s knowledge. Sitting next to him on the couch, I explained to him and the therapist what it was like in our family. Tried to give Johnny the words for the things he saw. The violence, the sexual abuse. “It’s not you,” I said. “This was what it was like in our home.”

      SISTER NO CONTACT was the result of my visit. I wouldn’t see Johnny for years.

      My children are 21 going on 22 years old. Maybe that’s why I’ve been thinking of Johnny. Though I think of him all the time. A loss that never leaves. There is always the thought – if I could have just taken him with me. Impossible. I didn’t have any money. I didn’t have a home. I was only 19 years old. I keep replaying it in my head, wanting it to be a movie. Girl saves baby brother. Mama-sister and kid brother leave home, grow up together. Safe. Happy.

      My son and daughter are safe. They aren’t worried about where they’re going to rest their heads tonight. Johnny was long gone by their age. It was typical to be kicked out of our house when you graduated high school. Johnny didn’t get that grace. He was gone by 13. He never graduated. Never got his GED. Finally left for Alaska and the fishing boats.

      All morning I’ve been looking down the basement stairs towards Juan’s bedroom. Looking for light, movement. Finally, I text: Are U alive down there? Need food? Fresh air? Water? Don’t make me come open your door for a health check.

      I relax when he texts: I am alive lol. I have my water bottle. I was about to change and come up for food. Smiley face emoji. I’m invested in a show, worst roommate ever.

      Crystel is building her life in Hawaii, knowing she has a home in Minnesota. Our weekly phone calls are as much to keep up with her as they are to support her.

      Twenties are for exploration. My time and energy were consumed with living at a halfway house, AA, and therapy. AA raising me. Teaching me values. Honesty. Truth. How to belong to a group. I hung on for dear life and learned everything I could.

      All you have to do is grow up and get out. I left the farmstead believing Johnny would survive. I can still feel our last hug. This 19-year-old woman hugging the 8-year-old boy.

      He never got free.  Even after our parents’ death.

       He died of a heroin overdose at 29.  His home – a makeshift shelter in The Jungle, a strip of woods in Seattle. He had his brothers and sisters’ contact information on a scrap of paper in his jeans.  

      It’s been 24 years since my brother’s death. The movie is about a girl-daughter-sister-mother who lost her brother. Who loved him deeply but couldn’t take him with her. A loss that doesn’t go away. And, even now, when the sister drives by freeway underpasses and scraggly underbrush she scans for places her brother might have called home.

      I didn’t know his story, the places he laid his head. I knew his spirit.

    • A Simple Thank You

      A Simple Thank You

      “I’m not a kid, anymore”, my son said. Why was I then having to cajole him into writing thank you cards? Isn’t that an adult thing? Jody and I had a gathering of up to fifty people to celebrate – and more importantly – to recognize his graduation from Dunwoody College of Technology. 

      Our son didn’t want a basket to be set out for cards. “It looks like I expect something, then,” he said.  

      He wore a hooded sweatshirt, graciously accepted the cards given to him, and slid the cards into his hoodie pocket. Later he transferred the cards to his cubby.

      My son graduated from Dunwoody with honors. Earlier, I had pointed to his Cum Laude and Outstanding Attendance designation on the commencement program. “You did that,” I said. “Me and Mama Jody never once got you up for school. We never once asked you if you had class work to do. You did that.”

      He looked pleased. “I know.”

      But, to write a thank you card?

      Ever since our son and daughter could hold a crayon, the expectation was to send thank you cards for birthday and holiday gifts. In some ways, it was easy for them. A thank you card is made of two halves. Our son would have one half and our daughter the other. They each would draw a picture displaying their own unique personality. Jody and I would address and mail the cards.

      Juan balked at drawing a picture. “I’m not a kid, anymore.”

      In retrospect, I probably should have expected his pushback sooner.

      My son and daughter are members of the first social generation to have grown up with access to the Internet. They are labeled digital natives. Both consume digital information quickly and comfortably through electronic devices and platforms.

      Where does that leave the digital immigrants? The grandparents, aunts and uncles, and family friends who grew up dominated by print before the advent of the Internet.

      We would like a thank you card, and we would like our children to send thank you cards.

      Is it enough for our children to say thank you in person when handed a card? I’m sure that my son did that. He is sociable, polite and courteous. I’m old-fashioned. I haven’t let go of the idea that the written word is important. Our son did end up sending thank you cards. He did the absolute bare minimum.

      Will thank you cards, thank you texts, emails, etc. become antiquated? Will it be all thought, all energy driven? Appreciation transmitted without electronics. Mind to mind. A glow of light. If asked, the children will say that we are already there. It’s us digital immigrants that must catch up.